ARTIFACTS

Last Second Saturday, the Fl!ght/1906 Complex hosted a hootenanny of creative output, including a musical performance by Boxcar Satan. But it’s the cerebro-visceral images produced by Thomas Cummins and his camera that I can’t get out of my head. His artist’s bio describes the work as “large-format lenticular 3D panoramic lightboxes of his nocturnal photography.” The looming scale, expressionist shadows, and creepy-curious regard of architecture’s semi-hidden spaces conspire to suggest (or reveal?) just enough implied narrative to make looking at them approach literary experience.

“Magnolia” still has me spellbound. Cummins grew up down the eponymous street from the house, a pile of Georgian-revival affectations that conjures up a Southern Gothic nightmare written by Thomas Wolfe and starring the twins from The Shining. I realized I’ve driven past the house myself, but had never seen it … like this. I figured he’d rigged the lighting to achieve the green emanation to the left of the columned porch, or the weird lavender banding in the sky, but he said he just snapped a series of photos during a two-minute digital exposure, then digitally “stitched” them together.

The exhibition, “you could almost say it glows,” haunts Fl!ght Gallery until January 3. Turnitoff.tv for info.